★ The Weeknd ★ What You Need ★

not when the middle stances are privileged so heavily over the original styles and methods

give me a break, dude.

No, lex is right. I've seen this a lot with listeners the last couple of years.

im going to backpedal slightly & say tim otm lol

yeah i dont think he is, even a little, but i guess this comes down to how aware you are of the 'critical community' & how you perceive it

lex, how many times have people called you geir?

yeah otm

writing this r&b/weeknd column at the moment and there's so much interesting stuff happening in r&b right now - it's been a beleaguered genre commercially of late, but in the past few months alone you've got two of its biggest stars explicitly defining it on record - r kelly singing "i wanna bring the love songs back to the radio" and diddy's intro to the r&b remix of "yeah yeah you would" - like they're pretty much staking something on this idea of "real", traditional r&b as something that's important to keep alive. and the career arcs of how kandi and dawn richard have wound up making some of the best r&b of the year are fascinating in themselves. and then that timothy bloom video that dropped out of nowhere and pretty much blew the r&b community away.

against this backdrop how the fuck do you even write a column purportedly about r&b and focus on the weeknd.

*tim otm

haha

lex, I'm curious to learn what you think of the new El Debarge record, my favorite "trad" R&B record of the last six months. Clearly he's following the classicist route (which he helped invent and define for R. Kelly and Ne-Yo).

i think lex has a point but the thing he should realize is that 'middle stances' being privileged over original styles isn't something that just happens to rap or r&b in the pitchfork universe -- it also happens to traditional indie music that ppl we would call squares like -- i think nabisco sorta wrestled w/ this sort of thing in his male bonding review from last year -- 'how do you make a plain r&b record appealing to people that are head over heels for the weekend' is the same as 'how do you make the make the male bonding record appealing to people that are head over heels for sleigh bells' -- it's something all formalists have to deal w/ now

i liked it alfred, albeit i didn't go back to it as much as the r kelly or jazmine ones - there was such a glut of r&b albums in december (each and every one EVEN KERI HILSON being exponentially more worthy of attention than the weeknd)

against this backdrop how the fuck do you even write a column purportedly about r&b and focus on the weeknd.

― lex pretend, Thursday, March 24, 2011 6:11 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

well idk i guess it depends on what you find interesting?

if you find r&b interesting exclusively when it's not being r&b, gtfo basically

well i would generally agree w/ you but i'm not really sure who you're talking about

i think the weeknd are too r&b to appeal to someone who outright hates/ignore the genre -- again, they're a far cry from how to dress well or gayngs

btw i'm actually listening to the whole weeknd thing now for this piece - the sacrifices i make - the songwriting is pretty much non-existent, it really is like a particularly boring version of that trey songz mixtape

if you find r&b interesting exclusively when it's not being r&b, gtfo basically
― lex pretend, Thursday, March 24, 2011 10:20 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is like coming into my house, shitting on my rug and telling me to leave

wish instead of wasting time tryna HAVE OPINIONS abt worthless chillwave or other cool music u dudes wld just stick to posting abt taylor swift all day

i'm glad i'm in a profession that is never the subject of ILX threads

lemme just say that i am not into every band trying to mix indie w/r'n'b.

Raw Moans
Maybe the only band on this list who’d admit to listening to R. Kelly… The San Diego duo of Laotian American fashion reconstructor Joseph Vorachack (who also records with Top Girls and Party Trash as Skylines) and Jeff Graves use the Oakland Raiders’ logo as their own and manage a kind of dark humor in even the bleaker edges of their R&B-meets-goth-industrial pop soundscapes. Raw Moans isn’t dark in the sense of some of the other folks — it’s late night and insular and lonesome, even when it isn’t. Disaro released the double CD-R We Want It Beautiful Not Real and RW RMX at the end of 2010.
http://rawmoans.bandcamp.com/album/rw-rmx

^ this is worth hating on for all the reasons upthread.

Raw Moans isn’t dark in the sense of some of the other folks — it’s late night and insular and lonesome, even when it isn’t.

so it's dark then

yeah see weeknd gets play cause its better than 100 raw moans doing the same thing but shitter, not because its doing diddy/r. kelley r&b but indie

i think lex has a point but the thing he should realize is that 'middle stances' being privileged over original styles isn't something that just happens to rap or r&b in the pitchfork universe -- it also happens to traditional indie music that ppl we would call squares like

I dunno, I think that the discourse is divided pretty evenly between people who will check for Male Bonding and The National and the like and people who will dismiss out of hand on the grounds of absence of innovation.

But try and imagine P&J, say, getting behind Trey Songz to the extent it gets behind The National.

Obv R&B isn't a special victim in this regard, but it's a prominent example: it's almost impossible for most critics to valorise the-dream without setting him up as some kind of internal exception to the genre-rule (and to be fair he kind of invites such a response). I think there is much more widespread (though certainly not unanimous) critical support for the idea of "good honest (indie) rock" than for "good honest R&B".

I still don't understand why we equate "privileged by critics" with "privileged"

The same way Beltway reporters confuse "us" with "them."

I still don't understand why we equate "privileged by critics" with "privileged

only insofar as we're talking about critical discourse.

In the same way that complaints that hollywood privileges "happy endings" aren't conclusively answered by pointing to the fact that hollywood is not representative of reality.

Yes, but I think it tends to be based on a very tautological definition of "critical discourse." For instance, one in which anyone talking about the Weeknd is part of "critical discourse," and the people already talking about Trey Songz are not. Or a video debuted on Pitchfork constitutes hype in "critical circles," whereas a video debuted on B.E.T. does not. In which case ... of course critics tend to privilege the things critics privilege.

Mostly I just want to be be clear that by "middle spaces" I wasn't talking about genre cross-pollination, or even really audience cross-pollination. That just wraps things even further in a critical discourse, and my point is that critical discourse is surely not the reason someone might respond to, say Weeknd! The reason the group might appeal to someone from one audience is the same reason it might not appeal to someone from another -- it's making specific decisions, about things like mixing and arrangement and self-presentation, that are inviting to some sensibilities and not others. To me, this isn't just about genre; it winds up staking out an actual mood and emotion effect that cannot just be substituted with any random other piece of r&b. This does not make it better or more important, but it certainly keeps me from being weirded out that some arty/indie-leaning listeners might be more interested in Weeknd than in Trey Songz, or that people who write about music for that audience might cover them.

I mean basically ... maybe this is an admission that I should not be writing about music at all, but hey, audiences are looking for different things -- I care about why, but I've ceased to understand kicking against the fact of it, I guess?

Well I'm not really kicking against the fact of it either, or surprised that some audiences might prefer Weeknd over Trey Songz, or saying that they're wrong to do so, I'm just saying none of this happens in some ideologicaly pure zone of "pure music".

People's enjoyment of stuff tends to follow established, carved-out water courses, is all, and of course this is as true for lex enjoying R&B as it is for p4k-reading-strawman enjoying indie.

To me, this isn't just about genre; it winds up staking out an actual mood and emotion effect that cannot just be substituted with any random other piece of r&b.

Strictly speaking no music is really substitable for another. I could just as easily argue that Trey Songz and Teedra Moses are not commensurate or exchangeable with one another. It's not so much Weeknd's "point of difference" that is being fantasised into existence here, but the very distinctiveness of this point of difference relative to a perceived undifferentiated morass of "genre".

People perceive difference in part because they're encouraged to do so, and fail to perceive it elsewhere because it's not drawn to their attention.

^^^yeah this is what im saying nabsico, like, i dont see nearly as much variation w/ this act as proponents of the artists do from the R&B mean

tim, people will especially notice points of distinction -- even minor ones -- if those distinctions address particular needs they have, resolve conflicts they have, and so on. in this case, it's not that Weeknd are uniquely different from other r&b! it's that the particular ways they're different do something of value for some narrow pocket of listeners.

some narrow pocket of listeners who happen to wield influence!

tim, people will especially notice points of distinction -- even minor ones -- if those distinctions address particular needs they have, resolve conflicts they have, and so on. in this case, it's not that Weeknd are uniquely different from other r&b! it's that the particular ways they're different do something of value for some narrow pocket of listeners.

Yes but this kind of implies that needs spring forth fully formed and pre-exist the music that addresses them and the discourse around that music.

Whereas music, like any product, like any art, mostly manufactures the needs it addresses. It's very rare that we perceive some musical absence until it is filled: the impression of absence is retrospective.

For the sake of clarity I'm not here to bitch about the Weeknd. What I'm saying would be no less true (just true in a different way) if the p4k-strawman-listener actually checked for Trey Songz instead.

xp -- Or maybe here's an analogy. There is abundant variation among dog breeds. They vary on all sorts of levels. A basenji does not differ from "most dogs" any more than countless other breeds. But if your particular relationship with dogs is that you just hate the sound of barking, then the barkless basenji is going to be unique to you in an incredibly specific way. So I guess I'm just trying to flip the question around from "what are Weeknd doing that's so special" to "what needs do certain listeners have that Weeknd might turn out to scratch?" (I haven't listened quite enough to be sure -- for all I know, it might just be about mixing r&b in a way that hits the ears like an indie album, rather than a super-compressed radio r&b single.)

xp -- Tim, I'd agree with that, sure: the needs, inclinations, and sensibilities we're talking about are totally learned and built. Though I think lots of them are just built around some previous need...

this argument is just "people have different tastes, whaddya gonna do about it", right? i mean fair enough i guess but it feels like completely giving up if you can't argue why something sucks or is amazing - and in any case it doesn't answer my beef w/the disproportionate coverage.

So I guess I'm just trying to flip the question around from "what are Weeknd doing that's so special" to "what needs do certain listeners have that Weeknd might turn out to scratch?" (I haven't listened quite enough to be sure -- for all I know, it might just be about mixing r&b in a way that hits the ears like an indie album, rather than a super-compressed radio r&b single.)

Yes this makes sense to me.

I just think it's important to stress that the needs in this case are public more than private, at least in the way they're articulated. I don't believe people tend to think to themselves "yes I love this and the reason I love this is that it answers a need I have for music that mixes R&B and indie" solely in the privacy of their own heads. That notion of need both precedes their experience of the music, assuming they've read anything about the music before it, and then retroactively structures their enjoyment as expressed to other people, in person or on ILM or on a blog or in a review or whatever. It's a public idea that renders a private experience communicable.

Connected to the fact the needs are learnt and built is the fact that needs are also justifications for conduct (though this definitely doesn't make them either bad or untrue) - I drink three beers each night and when asked why I say it's to unwind from this work, and I think this is simultaenously true and also a handy way to lend some kind of publicly legitimate cause-and-effect coherence to my behaviour.

And when we realise this is the case, the distance between the lines of enquiry: "what makes this so special" and "what needs does it fulfil" disappears, because the apparent filling-of-needs and the public-basis-of-specialness are one and the same.

maybe this is because it's 1.30am here but i honestly have no idea what that last sentence means tim.

It's kinda funny that someone compared these guys to trip-hop upthread cos Marsha Ambrosius covers Portishead on her album. Not that it means anything.

yeah the portishead cover is kind of pointlessly faithful

aaah I was wondering where I had heard that before

maybe this is because it's 1.30am here but i honestly have no idea what that last sentence means tim.

I interpret nabisco's position as being "what is worth thinking about with the Weeknd is not why they are special in general, but why they are important or interesting to particular listeners and what needs they are fulfilling for those listeners."

IMO this isn't really a dichotomy, because what particular listeners want and need is already shaped and formed by their interaction with public discourse.

i.e. radical subjectivism is bogus and lends too much mystical authority to "this is just the way I feel".

fwiw cuz im not sure this is always clear w/ these comparisons i brought up the trey songz comparison bcuz a few tracks on the last album & much of the anticipation mixtape are both fairly unusual considering his reputation as an artist & imo covers very similar 'vibes' to what this is aiming for, but does it more successfully.

and at some point i do kind of think that what this does for listeners that other 'regular R&B' artists dont becomes, well, it does what they dont, and that at some level its simply reactive.

see i'm more interested in what leads some people to download The Weeknd's songs or album and get excited about it when that connection doesn't occur for most other new R&B records outside of maybe The-Dream -- it seems like a matter of being only receptive to that music when it comes from certain avenues more than there being something that distinct and unusual about the music itself.

in my case, it was cuz jaxon recommended it!

yes but you check for r&b outside of the weekend, so that doesn't really count

i don't i don't nec wanna be the strawman for 'indie' 'blog reader' who only listens to something if it's weird. but i might as well accept parts of it even though i dislike indie rock and i don't read blogs.

― jaxon, Thursday, March 24, 2011 3:24 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

2 of your first 3 posts on this thread were links to blogs, i'm sorry if that led me to make scandalous assumptions about your web browsing habits.

yes but you check for r&b outside of the weekend, so that doesn't really count

― wavy g. wavegarten (J0rdan S.), Friday, March 25, 2011 2:42 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha yeah i know i wasnt really 'making a pt related to the argument' more just saying why i bothered

see i'm more interested in what leads some people to download The Weeknd's songs or album and get excited about it when that connection doesn't occur for most other new R&B records outside of maybe The-Dream -- it seems like a matter of being only receptive to that music when it comes from certain avenues more than there being something that distinct and unusual about the music itself.

― some dude, Thursday, March 24, 2011 4:37 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

srs dont get why you guys have wasted 300 posts itt trying to figure out how The Weeknd is different from "other R&B" i dunno maybe fuckin listen to it it sounds way different

my "avenue" for downloading the weeknd's songs: i heard "the morning" on a youtube link a friend sent me and i really liked it so i listened to the other stuff. when the mixtape dropped this week i downloaded it. NO BLOGS WERE INVOLVED.

also i own a basenji mix:
http://a2.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash1/29441_1488590575961_1269860854_1354382_3862676_n.jpg
since she's not 100% basenji, she can bark but rarely does